S Stilinski, Paranormal Private Investigator
by hyb9
Summary: Payments accepted in cash, credit, and curly fries.
1. Chapter 1

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"Scott, I am not investigating your daughter's boyfriend," Stiles repeats.

"Why aren't you worried about this?" Scott shouts back over the line. "You should be worried about this!"

"First, because you're doing that thing we talked about. Starts with 'over', ends in 'reacting'. Second, because you've clearly been hanging around your father-in-law too much. Third, your werewolf daughter can take care of herself just fine-"

"I hate it when you make lists," Scott grumbles.

"And fourth," Stiles concludes with a flourish "he only put mud in her hair. Also they are five years old. That about cover it? Want me to draw up a diagram and fax it to you?"

"Do you really have a fax machine?" Scott asks, incredulous.

Stiles glances to the left of his office. Glances to the right of his office. Ducks to peer under his desk, just to be safe. Never hurts to check for spiders, anyway.

"Nope," he admits brightly. "Gotta go, my next client's here."

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When Stiles was six, he wanted to be a cop like his dad. When he was sixteen, he wanted to be a chef. Or a pilot. Or a drummer. Or a personal Ferrari shopper. Mostly he wanted to be anything that would make Lydia Martin spin on her perfectly arched heel and pledge her undying love.

At twenty-six, he finds himself in a narrow brown office over a diner that specializes in fried chicken on waffles. Stiles had never envisioned a future as a private investigator (okay, once, but Lydia was going to sweep into his office in a short black trench coat and shake the rain out of her hair and tell Stiles that he was the only one who could help her, the only gumshoe for the job). But when you're seventeen and your best friend slash brother from another mother slash platonic life partner gets chomped on by an alpha werewolf in the throes of a messy, lose-your-anchor divorce, life changes. A lot.

Stiles considers himself one stealthy motherfucker. Scott, not so much.

By the time they graduated high school, elbow to elbow in their red polyester gowns and crooked mortarboards, Scott McCall, resident teenage werewolf, was only a secret in the sense that the entire town of Beacon Hills knew, and covered for his ass. Stiles didn't mind losing valedictorian to Lydia, not when she smoothed her hands over the podium, barked at Jackson to put his phone away, quoted Archimedes, and acknowledged Beacon Hills High School as "the arena in which we challenged ourselves not only to accept the profound weirdness in our fellow students, but to celebrate it. To set aside all that petty high school shit and be the people we were meant to be. Unafraid."

Winning three state championships for the lacrosse team didn't hurt. Still, Scott blushed and glanced over at Allison through the sea of shoulders and tassels, then grinned down at his shoes.

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The clock over the door reads a quarter of six. Stiles doesn't particularly approve of analog clocks, they make him feel like he's back in high school white-knuckling his way through Harris' toxic chem class. Apparently the marriage counselor who leased his office before couldn't bear the thought of spending one minute more than prescribed with her feuding patients, and the clock is affixed to the wall by some nefarious adhesive immune to nail polish remover, screwdrivers, hammers, and improvised blowtorches. The last was an ill-advised contraption rigged to a can of WD-40. After singeing his eyebrows off, Stiles conceded to the clock and its evident will to live.

At present, Stiles is elbowed up on his desk, getting trounced at internet chess by some thirteen year-old in Korea. Stiles sort of fucked his laptop a while back when he jumped up to save his microwave popcorn from scorching and tripped over his power cord. Now the frame is cracked and the upper left portion of his screen is black. He chooses to blamed his obstructed visibility for his opponent's lead.

Honestly, there's a box of wine in Stiles' fridge calling his name. He flicks a glance up to the clock again. Five forty-nine. And that evil prepubescent genius just castled his king out of check.

Stiles has a new episode of Mythbusters to watch, and this whole "be your own boss, be professional, stay in your office during office hours" thing requires a reservoir of self-discipline that Stiles finds rapidly seeping out of his pores as six o'clock nears.

Stiles' frosted glass door reads "S. Stilinski, Paranormal Private Investigation". So does his card. He'd weighed the options, the phraseology, back when he first moved to Los Angeles, when he was sleeping on Lydia's loveseat in her graduate student housing with the water-stained ceiling possibly haunted fridge.

In the end, he decided to go straightforward with his title and let the non-initiated public assume what they would.

Once a month, maybe more, he gets a walk-in with some bogus haunting gig, and if it helps his clients sleep at night, placebo-effect or whatever, Stiles will collect his payment with a smile. Usually it just means boarding up a drafty attic or replacing a few light bulbs, or maybe just chanting Latin backwards and shaking some oregano around the place. Have to keep the lights on somehow, and Stiles has a rattling, oil-sucking Jeep to maintain.

Five fifty-four and Stiles forfeits his game.

That's about the time his door is kicked in, splinters erupting like shrapnel. Stiles has his revolver in hand, hammer cocked, finger curled around the trigger, he's a quick fucking draw and you keep your sidearm in reach when your office caters to wolves and fairies and the occasional stumped hunter. Stiles' job is like a box of chocolates, only his surprises come with fangs and claws and pixie dust.

Stiles is on his feet with his weight braced, arms extended to clean, steady lines, before he really sees the guy. The jerk-off fantasy stubble and the clenched fists and the hawkish nose. Knocks the fight clean out of him, and he lowers the gun to his side.

"Derek?" he asks, tasting the weight of the name on his tongue.

"And who the fuck are you?" Derek snarls back, and yep, that's some serious golden action happening to his optics, not to mention the fangs.

"Stiles Stilinski," he snaps right back, properly incensed now, shoving his revolver back into his thigh holster. "Private investigator? Even if you don't remember me, I'd think you could read the sign. Or do you just kick doors in like, a hobby? You're paying for that, by the way," he adds. "Now put your pearly whites away. What do you want?"

To his not inconsiderable consternation, Derek looks chastened, and he does so. Folds his chompers away, and his claws, and his eyes are the same unfairly appealing sea glass green that Stiles remembers.

"Derek," says Derek, brows beetling. "Is that- my name?"

Stiles blinks, and he must be catching flies, slack-jawed in disbelief, because Derek's jaw hardens into a scowl that looks practiced for all Stiles has never witnessed it before.

"I don't know who I am," he says stiffly. "When I woke up, I was sitting on a bench in front of the wolf enclosure at the zoo." Stiles doesn't quite manage to stifle his snort. "I don't have my phone, or my wallet, I don't have a dollar. All I have," he growls, "is your card. In my pocket."

At that, he does produce a card from the pocket of his- really, fucking tight jeans. They look ready to pop a seam, straining across the bunching muscle in Derek's thighs. Not that Stiles was, looking. Or remembering.

Derek slaps the card down on the desk, his glare accusing, and yeah, Stiles recognizes that. It's last year's version, there's a fax number under his land line, and seriously, what happened to his fax machine? The font is embossed black on cream-colored stock, and over his name Stiles had crossed out the abbreviated S and scrawled "Stiles- so you don't forget" in blue pen. The corners are worn soft and white.

Stiles had tucked that card into Derek's back pocket, at an overloud bar in West Hollywood. He was trying to play hard to get, make a mysterious exit, but ten minutes later he was cutting through parking lots dragging Derek to his Jeep anyway. When he was unzipping Derek's jeans with his teeth, backed against Stiles' front door, he had slipped a hand around Derek's (sleek, tanned everywhere, god) hip, and touched his card in Derek's back pocket like a talisman.

The laughter catches at his throat like broken glass, ugly, and Stiles would swallow it back if he could.

"Wow," he says, pleasantly poisonous. "You really don't remember me, do you?"

"I don't remember anything," Derek says. He looks a little scared now, holding himself tight like a string about to snap. Stiles feels sorry for him. Not much, considering, but he's tender as the dawn, it's a weakness.

Stiles collapses heavily into his chair, wheels squeaking in protest. Derek's shoulders are hunched under his black leather jacket, it's fucking spring, and Derek just looks like the best rough trade, for all that he's clearly used up all his bitchiness and remembered to freak out again.

"I remember that I'm a werewolf," Derek ventures. "Other people shouldn't know that. But you do-"

"Obviously," Stiles huffs, rolling his eyes. "Aside from your totally unsubtle entrance. I pegged you before we even met. Any guy who gets served a certain purple petal in his gin and tonic stands out."

That, and after Stiles called Derek out, called him "sour wolf" with lips brushing his ear, engine puttering at a red light, Derek had blinked, laughed, and proceeded to assault Stiles' neck shamelessly for the remainder of their drive, sniffing and licking and biting and rubbing him raw. Stiles was damn lucky he didn't wrap the Jeep around a telephone pole.

"Doesn't sounds like we're friends. Stiles?" He furrows his bushy yet also fucking hot brows at the name, but then Stiles glowers, and Derek is smart enough to bite his tongue.

"Hardly. We fucked once," Stiles offers. Likes the easy dispassionate lilt of his voice. Let Derek think Stiles was the one who had better things to do than call. Or stay the night. "Sucks to be you, because I don't even know your last name."

Derek deflates a bit. Then cocks his head, leans back on his heels, and studies the busted door.

"But you are a detective," he says, "and you know what I am. You know my name. Hn. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope," he deadpans, then pauses. "Huh. Star Wars."

"You are the actual worst," Stiles promises fervently. "And when this is all over you're getting a bill for my time and my door and my gas. Now sit down."

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A/N: I'm shaking off a lot of rust. Any comments or critiques would be deeply appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

Just last week, Stiles clung to a splintering, sun-bleached pier with his toes, choking on salt spray, so he could hand a mermaid her wedding ring. It was pretty enough, a gold band and a hulking conch pearl the color of coral. Stiles tracked that damn ring all the way to Vegas, along with the mermaid's shifty husband and his new playmate, and genially threatened it out of him with cold iron.

That was pretty standard fare. Stiles would take cheating supernatural spouses any day over this.

Derek's stomach growls until Stiles surrenders his indifference and phones downstairs. Guy just walked like, ten miles to Stiles' office. Could have caught a ride, dude, but he keeps that thought to himself. Derek literally cannot remember the last time he ate. Just the thought gets Stiles ravenous, and he calls down again for a couple orders of fried green tomatoes on the side.

So far, the list of what Derek remembers consists of, in no particular order: Star Wars, basketball, werewolves, how to walk from the hundred-acre Los Angeles Zoo to Fountain and Fairfax, how to drive (in theory), and that he's thirty-two.

Though Stiles manfully resists the compilation of a matching list, things Derek does not remember include the whereabouts of his pack, if he even owns a car, his birthday, his address, his social security number, his favorite basketball team, when he even saw Star Wars, or anything else Stiles could use as a lead.

Derek scowls a lot, sullen under Stiles' interrogatory barrage. When he shrugs out of his jacket, his shirt clings to the patch of sweat between the swell of his pectorals, the valley of his shoulder blades.

Stiles wants to lick him.

Asshole.

Stiles has a scanner that actually functions once for every three attempts, wayward ever since pixie dust got in between the seams, asbestos of the supernatural world. Tonight luck is with him, though, and it fires up without spitting out feathers or silver sparks. Derek looks thunderously offended over having his fingerprints taken. As offended as a guy can look, with crumbs down his shirt and a battered drumstick hanging out of his mouth.

"You think I'm a criminal," Derek says, wiping his greasy hands on his jeans. Stiles experiences a wave of self-disgust. He slept with this heathen. Derek glances at his leather jacket, his scuffed boots, his broad, bulging forearms – well, Stiles' revulsion lasted seven seconds – and bites off a despairing sound.

"I look like a criminal. Why was I wearing a leather jacket? It's spring. Clearly I'm a criminal."

"Right now, stealing a car in your wild youth would be a best case scenario," Stiles assures him, with only a dash of schadenfreude. "I mean, you do have that tattoo. Maybe you're in a gang."

"I have a tattoo?" Derek blinks. Then pulls his shirt up with one hand, peering down at his torso. Because there is no justice in the world, Derek's abs are the artisan-crafted cobblestones Stiles remembers, the yellow brick road of hotness leading to Derek's groin. Stiles can almost taste his skin, the heat of him, if he were to drag his thumb down that shadowed groove, chase it with his tongue.

"Not there, dork, it's – between your shoulders." He's waiting for Derek to strip and preen at his reflection in the window. Except Derek's dropped his shirt and he's leaning forward in his chair, cracked leatherette creaking, his nostrils are flaring and he's not looking anywhere but at Stiles.

"That. Turned you on. I can smell you," Derek accuses. Well, maybe not accuses. Sounds kind of awed, and hell, this is probably like, the first time he's smelled someone getting hot for him. Still annoying. Stiles takes the high road and throws a purple stress ball at him.

"Rude!"

"You smell good," Derek mutters stubbornly. He ducks his head, but he's not looking away. His thumb is rubbing circles over his forefinger, tight and quick. "You said we slept together. Before."

"Dude, priorities? I've got to like, flirt with illegality here to run your prints. I'm not even supposed to have access to these databases, you wanna focus here?"

Stiles never saw Derek frown, that night. Just tut like a grandma over motorists not using their turn signals, and watch Stiles, laugh with his head thrown back and teeth flashing, smile tucked against the skin when he kissed Stiles' knee.

"Here's what we know. You can't have been this way for long. You got yourself into the zoo, and so we're assuming you had your wits and ID and all until then. Since I've never known a werewolf to get his brain scrambled by head trauma – I fucking swear, Derek, there is no more chicken, stop poking around in there and listen. Since there's no puncture wounds in your neck, and this is a recent development, we'll rule out an alpha tampering with your memories. For now, that leaves magic. You probably pissed somebody off," he adds helpfully.

"Right now, I've got no lock on your prints and no APBs that match. So if your pack is looking for you, if they even know you're missing, they're not going to the cops. Yet." Of course, if supes liked law enforcement, Stiles would be out of a job.

"Do you even have a plan?" Derek asks.

"Well kicking you to the curb did cross my mind. I mean, I could tell you to go peddle your ass until you can actually afford this little adventure. But yeah, I have a plan," he relents. "We're going to see a friend of mine."

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Stiles doesn't feel guilty about ignoring Derek on the drive. He doesn't. Since he doesn't have a dollar in hand yet for this job, he doesn't feel guilty cranking up NPR and keeping his eyes on the road. Even so, he can see how Derek settles, knees splayed wide, arm hooked out the window, all the lines of him exactly the same.

The Jeep has a stereo transplanted from a Toyota, last time they were here there was a cassette stuck in the deck and Stiles had given up trying to pry it out, just got shocked every time for his trouble.

When Derek had tried to turn on the radio, still rolling his eyes at the "sour wolf" comment, biting a tendon in Stiles' neck – the speakers had suddenly howled with "Werewolves of London", and the two of them laughed themselves sick, flushed and gasping. Derek's hand was warm on Stiles' thigh, he squeezed every time he made Stiles' breath hitch.

It was nine, ten months ago (it was ten) and it would be a blessing not to remember so clearly. But Stiles never even got to have a drink when they met, stood at the bar grinning at Derek with the ice melting in his Jack, forgot to even take a sip. So the night is all crisp edges and sense memory, much as he might wish otherwise.

They take the lazy curves of Sunset west, flirt with the verdant green edge of campus, down to Wilshire.

There's a high-rise, all bleach white and faceted blue windows. Stiles eases the steering wheel, inches around the fountain because he's not about to clip a fucking Mercedes and lose a kidney paying it off. The valet doesn't recognize him, some new kid in a starched shirt and polyester vest who looks ready to tackle Stiles if he lunges for the door. So he shuffles out his guest parking pass from behind his glossy, unused gym card.

Parks the Jeep himself, because she's a jealous mistress and no one else is allowed to drive her.

They wind down to the third level of the underground garage, and Derek is studying the parking pass Stiles hooks over his mirror a little too intently.

"So when you say friend," he prompts.

"Nah," Stiles grimaces. "I'm not exactly, her type. Wait til you meet her husband, you'll see."

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When they disembark the elevator on the top floor and knock, there's a sudden flurry of feet that even Stiles can hear, rushed and clumsy.

The door swings inward and Jackson is glaring, that bulging eyeball look isn't his best, he's gesturing abortively for Stiles' throat with rigid fingers that clearly yearn for strangulation. Derek actually grapples for his wrist before he can make contact- Stiles has to blink and pry the two of them apart.

Jackson has a few days of stubble and he's wearing an argyle trouser sock on one foot, basketball shorts that hang low and no shirt, yeah he's chiseled from fucking granite with aggressively defined hips, but there's applesauce or something dried in his hair, so Stiles can live with his resentment.

"Sophie and Grace just went down," Jackson hisses, quietly harried. "Get inside, and keep it down or I'll throw you off the roof." He does flick another measuring glare at Derek, but he's ushering them both inside, urging them out of their shoes in the foyer. The floors are American walnut, Stiles has heard it all before.

Stiles wonders how much Lydia's colleagues over in UCLA's math department hate her, for ascending straight from grad school to a coveted teaching position at her alma mater, no doubt of her tenure to come. If he ever met any of them, Stiles would say not to get between Lydia Martin and her Fields Medal. Just accept the honor of losing to greatness.

Or maybe they just hate her for gaining ten pounds when she had the twins last year, keeping the weight and looking better than ever, for having an honest to god underwear model husband looking after the kids at home.

Jackson took Martin as his last name when they got married, his working name. Last Stiles heard, his parents were just relieved not to be associated with the print ads of their pre-law dropout in nothing but baby oil and radiantly white Armani briefs. The paychecks keep them in a corner penthouse with southeast exposure and endless orchids.

Of course, most people don't see Lydia in her bare feet, hair twisted up with red pencils, perched on her kitchen counter with orange peelings in her lap and a bottle of white wine clutched to her chest.

After a great deal of the three of them mouthing incomprehensibly and gesturing at each other while Derek stares, the werewolf in question gets shoved into a white leather armchair, who even has those, while Jackson pads off to check on the twins. Derek must be able to hear them, tiny stubborn heartbeats, because he's carefully silent, doesn't argue. He flips through last month's issue of Cosmo like it's no trouble at all, an incongruous blot of darkness, rough with stubble, amid Lydia's pristine furnishings.

Stiles and Lydia huddle in her office with the door closed. She's still drinking unoaked chardonnay from the bottle, listening to his rambling explanation. Only when he glosses over Derek's chance possession of his business card does she sharpen her attention, snagging his ear between her thumb and forefinger.

"Stiles, is that the eleven?"

Always, he will always hate himself for texting Lydia when he was hyperventilating over some guy he saw through a sea of bodies in a club with bad music and overpriced drinks, some guy with heavy brows and a quicksilver grin, sudden and startling.

"Maybe," he mutters.

"The eleven who ravished you like some Regency bride and then fled by moonlight?" she prompts. "And we're helping him, why?"

"Look, the sooner we find out who he is and who spelled him, the sooner he can flee again," Stiles retorts, tugging at the bottle of wine to no avail. "Once he pays me, I don't care, I'm done."

Lydia stares him down with emasculating pity. Stiles wheedles and deals, promises an unholy number of pro bono hours babysitting, because those pretty little demon twins love him, and she folds like origami. Sleep deprivation is really wearing down her resolve.

When Lydia tosses a throw pillow at Derek and tells him to close his eyes, he catches the pillow, and does nothing.

When Stiles tells him to close his eyes, he closes his eyes. Lydia snaps the photo on her phone and tells them to go away, she'll call Stiles when her program turns something up, when and not if.

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Under his bruised ego, Stiles feels some stirring of sympathy despite himself. It's no small thing, asking someone who's kind of at your mercy to walk into a stranger's home, sit and wait, sit and wait.

On the drive back home, he doesn't drown out Derek's questioning silence with the radio. He does watch the streetlamps slant amber over Derek's cheek, catch bright where Derek's been biting his lower lip damp.

"You really don't like me, do you?" Derek has his elbow propped up against the window, chin in his hand.

"I really don't know you. I'm helping you, aren't I? I'm just not up for burning the midnight oil. We'll check out the zoo tomorrow morning."

"That's not what I meant," Derek says under his breath. Stiles pretends not to hear.

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What Stiles shells out for his one bedroom apartment could rent a family-sized house, back home. The space is all abrupt elbow-jarring angles, wallpaper in unsettling shades of green, lifeless beige carpet. But he can hear his rat chirping as soon as he walks through the door, the pots and pans hanging over the stove are all shiny with use, and he finally bought curtains.

It's home, or close enough.

Quarter to eleven, according to his microwave. Late enough that he doesn't feel beholden to feed Derek again. So he shoves Derek off to the shower with a change of clothes that won't fit quite right and a towel.

Stiles sips fortified red wine from his Batman mug and throws a couple blankets on the lumpy couch, adds a pillow that he's almost sure he's never ejaculated on.

Scully perches on his shoulder while Stiles plies her with Cheerios, her tail swishing in a comforting metronome. When a hand flattens along his spine, Stiles jumps. Tiny nails scratch his neck as Scully scrabbles for purchase, sneezing indignantly.

"What the fuck?"

Derek looks troubled but not apologetic. His thumb catches over a false rib before falling away. This close, he looks thinner than Stiles remembers, the hollows of his cheeks more defined.

"I still don't know what I was supposed to see," Derek says. Flicks his gaze down to Stiles' mouth, and away too quickly.

"You- just, stand there, geez." Stiles gets Scully squared away in her cage, nested in old flannels, before he can return to the kitchen and deal with Derek.

"What, Derek? What don't you see?"

This time Derek doesn't hesitate. He strokes a knuckle along Stiles' lower lip. Stiles darts his tongue out, reflexive, and they both freeze.

"You said I would see, when I met your friend's husband," Derek insists. He's pressing his thumb to the corner of Stiles' mouth now, curling his fingers under Stiles' chin. The only point of contact, but Stiles feels pinned against the counter, suffocating under the weight of that regard. "I may only have half a day's experience to go by, but you're still the most beautiful person I've ever seen."

Stiles shoves his forearm into Derek's throat.

"Touch me again and I quit," he snaps. Humiliation scalds across his cheeks, he'd punch Derek in his perfect fucking mouth if he could unfold his right hand, still clenched white around his mug. "You can fuck off and fix this on your own for all I care. It is not my job to make you feel better, you get that? No, Derek, I don't fucking like you. Shut up," he warns when Derek opens his mouth again.

Derek shuts his mouth with a click of teeth, doesn't look away.

"I get that I'm supposed to feel sorry for you, you can't remember. But what I remember, Derek? Is waking up alone with a condom stuck to my thigh. So maybe that's you, maybe you're just the kind of douchebag who does that. I don't care. But this isn't your reset button, and you don't get another once and done."

"You really think that once I remember, I'll stop wanting you kiss you?" Derek snaps, like he has any right to be offended.

"I think once you remember, you'll leave me the fuck alone," Stiles says grimly. "Wasn't enough to stick around for the first time. We're done. Stop trying to fix it."

No matter how tightly he shuts his eyes, laying in bed, Stiles can hear Derek breathe. Deep lung measures, like a runner. Heavy, like the press of a hand in the center of his chest. A warm voice, colored with wonder, telling him to just stay there a moment.

"I want to remember the first time," Derek had said.


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